Mr Zhou's Dumplings Mt Eden - BYO — Restaurant in Albert-Eden

$13 for 20 dumplings? Pretty good. $4 for a sesame sugar pancake? Not bad.

So after hearing some chatter about this longtime local restaurant I decided to go for lunch after finishing work early today.

The place is simple, it's cool and quaint, has a certain classic Chinese restaurant look to it, calming music plays in the background. The menu is straightforward with a decent selection of dishes, a small detail I noticed is how their condiments all have a custom 'Mr Zhou's dumplings' banner naming each sauce, very nice. The utensil set is neat coming with a small dipping bowl and a plate.

Service is snappy, the pancake came first, crispy yet chewy and piping hot. Sweet with a sesame undertone, perhaps black sesame seeds would look prettier but I do believe white sesame seeds taste better.

The star of the show being the dumplings, I ordered half pork & chives (the traditional) and half pork & coriander (since I love coriander so much). All the dumplings were portioned evenly, and boiled perfectly. Just enough to be cooked and yet not overly wrinkly/watery/melted wrapping The pork & chives tasted great, standard expectations of a traditional filling. The pork & coriander however... Really grew on me the more I ate, definitely another favorite filling. Pairing some 1:1 ratio of soy to vinegar improved the taste, adding chilli oil topped it off. However, their chilli oil could be better, not my favorite but still acceptable, had heat and taste but not enough aroma.

Overall definitely good value and tasty, great for a quick meal on your break,I see myself visiting again, but...

We have loved eating here since Mr Zhou's first opened, we would get takeaways at least once a week but we won't be returning after a bad experience tonight. I ordered a takeaway meal and paid for it, the service was perfunctory but that's what we've gotten accustomed to here so that was fine. I took my receipt and left. I came back to pick up my order but was told that because I'd lost the receipt that I would have to pay again. I showed the staff member my bank app with the payment confirmed but she refused to believe me. She then told me off for taking my receipt, that I'd mucked up their process. She said that I shouldn't have done that, despite the fact that she was on the phone when I left after ordering and didn't acknowledge me at all. When I asked how I was meant to get a refund after the double payment she shrugged and said it wasn't her problem. She eventually agreed to let me leave my number and name so she could chase me up if the payment didn't come through. It was a humiliating and unpleasant experience and we won't...

First of all we went to this place to celebrate my partners birthday because their Google "About" page says it's good for kids and have high chairs. At the reception I told we have 4 adults and 1 baby, and asked whether we can get a highchair, he said no, no we don't have highchairs. Secondly we asked whether there's a changing table in the toilet, which is usually available in "Good for kids" restaurants. Somehow we asked whether we can bring our pram in to keep the baby, which couple of the staff members gave us the vibe that they didn't like the fact that we bought the pram or the baby. Other than that food arrived super fast, was really good specially the pork and chives dumplings, chicken and corriander dumplings and the combination fried rice. It was a pity that we wanted to get noodles but they said they don't have noodles in a very confusing tone. I guess they ran out of noodles. Would have been a better experience if the staff were...